No one is lining up for Windows Vista in San Francisco — Earlier tonight I attended a Windows Vista launch event in San Francisco and was surprised to find not a single person in line to buy the software less than an hour before launch. CompUSA stayed open late to provide hands-on demonstrations …

Andy Beal Spamming MyBlogLog? — Hey Andy, this isn't too cool: — And I suspect that you know better. You're a smart guy. So how about setting a good example instead of making me wonder how we should treat people trying to take advantage of the system? It's a pretty cheap stunt, ya know?

Profit Slips at Sony on Losses for PlayStation 3 — Sony, the Japanese electronics maker, said today that its profit had slipped in the third quarter as it took large losses on its new PlayStation 3 game console. — But the company raised its annual profit forecast following strong sales …

FBI turns to broad new wiretap method — The FBI appears to have adopted an invasive Internet surveillance technique that collects far more data on innocent Americans than previously has been disclosed. — Instead of recording only what a particular suspect is doing …

High-quality images of Apple's first orange iPod (shuffle) — Apple on Tuesday graced its affordable line of iPod shuffle digital music players with a fresh array of hues, including orange — a first for the iPod family. — The Cupertino-based company also broke the shuffle's gender barrier …

I Was a Cybercrook for the FBI — By the time David Thomas eased his Cadillac into the parking lot of an office complex in Issaquah, Washington, he already suspected the police were on to him. — An empty Crown Victoria in one of the parking spaces confirmed it.

SECOND LIFE: Put your money on World of Warcraft — CLAY SHIRKY — If we don't start off by lumping Second Life with World of Warcraft as virtual worlds, a question emerges: why do virtual game worlds outperform non-game worlds in their adoption? — I have never doubted …

Holland Considers Banning DRM, Legalizing Filesharing — Recently Dutch Record Companies decided to no longer use copy protection on CDs because the costs didn't outweigh the benefits. Politicians are now looking for alternative ways to compensate the Music Industry.

The Seminal Web 2.0 Service — I wrote the following about YouTube the other day: … I am an afficianado of web services. I love using them, figuring out how they work, the neat stuff you can do with them. I learn so much from using the web. And I try to write about it as much as I can.

BillMonk is now an Obopay company! Settle up online. — We are delighted to announce that BillMonk has been acquired by Obopay, Inc. — Obopay built the first comprehensive mobile person-to-person payments service in the US that lets you instantly send money to anyone using your mobile phone …

Microsoft tackling threat from Google model — Microsoft's next big challenge is to address the threat posed by advertising-supported business models such as Google's, Steve Ballmer, chief executive, signalled on Monday as the software group launched Vista, its new operating system.

Rogue Second Life Server Goes Open Source — While Prokofy Neva, Tony Walsh and others wonder what will happen to Second Life real estate investments once it's possible to run your own open-source server (i.e., create your own virtual land), someone has gone ahead and done just that.

Yahoo! Search Marketing More Broke Than Ever — When Yahoo! bought Overture they had the market default position as being THE KEYWORD TOOL. As a company that makes most of its profits from selling keywords, how dumb is is for them to let their keyword research tool die without warning?